Housing permits seek a new normal, in charts

Two new graphics from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show how residential building permits are faring in the slow recovery:

In the aftermath of the housing crash, Washington permits have a long way to go before they reach their old peaks. Note the severity of the falloff during the Great Recession compared with other recessions (marked in grey). For Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, the improvement is slightly more pronounced. Even so, it remains weak.

When we narrow the permits down to one-unit homes for the metro, the decline and slow rebound is even more steep:

It could be worse. Check out the data for Phoenix, epicenter of overbuilding and the housing crash:

The lesson is that even though house sales and prices are rebounding, we’re a long way from the old normal, where housing was the last big factory work for so many Americans.